


The Good Reaper

by ImJaebabie



Series: no baby, no baby not today [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Background Relationships, Fluff and Angst, Grim Reapers, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, human!donghyuck, incoming: new characters!, rated mature for mature themes(like death), reaper!doyoung, tw: death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2020-04-08 02:35:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19098016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImJaebabie/pseuds/ImJaebabie
Summary: “Oh…” Doyoung breathed, watching. Then, he made a decision. “First one to hiccup, wins,” he whispered.Donghyuck’s breath hitched with another small spasm, the pattern continuing. The reaper didn’t even inhale.Then, Doyoung smiled. “Good job. See you in a year, Donghyuck.”~~Sequel to: I Always Lose Against You





	1. Sun rays out the corner of my eye

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday, Lee Donghyuck. 
> 
> maybe this universe means everything to me. 
> 
> PLEASE read [this first](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17280035) if u haven't already. it's a necessary prerequisite for this to make sense.
> 
> theme song for this universe, btw, is Sia's "Reaper".

Doyoung was a reaper for far longer than he had ever been anything else. Ages ago, years and centuries without number because, when most of your existence is spent in the timeless afterlife—with only brief, blinking moments of the living world—you start to lose touch with the passage of time, Doyoung had been some kind of person, and then he had died. Persons tend to do that. He did not remember coming to the afterlife. He did not remember who or what led him there, but he did recall lying complacently in the cool grass by the river, long hair draping over his shoulder and loose grey garment growing damp, and watching the flow of newly passed souls filtering in, wandering somewhat aimlessly. He remembered finding the inefficiency of it a bit ridiculous, almost annoying.

“Shortage of willing reapers, these days,” a calm voice had said, above and behind him. Doyoung turned to it, his expression blank at the sight of the man dressed in black.

The man’s eyes shifted from the trickle of people to Doyoung, placid as a lake just seconds from freezing over. “A bit listless, aren’t they?”  
  
“I suppose.”

“Would you do something about it?”

Doyoung considered whether he cared. “Maybe.”

A slip of a smile touched the corner of the man’s lips. “Don’t be _too_ eager, now. Why don’t you come with me, and see if you like reaping better than keeping the grass warm.”

So Doyoung learned how to be a reaper, took the class with the handful of others, signed the forms that yes, he did volunteer for this. Sehun, aside from recruiting him, turned out to be a more than thorough teacher, if a little wry about his opinion of some of the rules, and Doyoung felt a flutter of pride receiving his certification from him.

“Go get ‘em, kid. Job’s yours now.”

“Come on, you can’t be that much—” _older than me_ , Doyoung nearly said, but stopped at the absolutely dead look in Sehun’s eyes. “Uhh, are you not reaping anymore, hyung?” he said instead.

“Oh, no, definitely not. I’m going on sabbatical for...at least the next six centuries. Maybe more. Need a break from all the dying people.”

Doyoung didn’t really see Sehun after that, not that he had a particular need to. There was a lot to be done. It took him a handful of decades to eliminate the backlog of reapings—it irked him every time a soul entered the afterlife unescorted, confused and wayward, so he fixed that—and recruit enough reaper volunteers to keep things smooth going forward. Doyoung was fairly certain this was why his supervisor liked him so much—the older reapers were lackadaisical, the younger ones too uncertain. So if Doyoung made the occasional compromise, Taeil didn’t seem to mind.

“You must have been someone very organized, in your life,” the older reaper commented, once. “Like a magistrate or royal advisor, maybe?”

“I don’t remember,” Doyoung replied, taking his short scroll of upcoming reapings, a flash of red robes and parchment crossing his mind and gone just as fast.

There weren’t too many special cases. Most souls were too afraid of him to think of bartering for time, but the occasional exception kept things interesting. Like the old woman who asked for two more years in exchange for making him a new cloak. His grey garment, naturally growing black with each moment of death he encountered, had worn thin enough that he easily accepted. Doyoung never considered himself any kind of model, but upon her death the woman found a host of reapers eager to commission her work. Or the man who offered to give Doyoung his choice of bone for his scythe, post-mortem, for just four months more with his pregnant wife. The man died happily having met his daughter, and Doyoung got a far cooler scythe, so that was nice. So long as something of high enough value was traded, there was no issue.

The work by its nature brought sad, difficult, and even terrible things in front of Doyoung’s eyes. The wicked souls he reaped with silent, cold eyes and the sting of his scythe. But many things were worse, and for a long while he withstood it all—collecting hosts of souls from battlefields, plagues or famines; carrying the pure souls of infants to their safe place from their mourning mothers’ arms; supporting the elbows of elderly souls with no one at their deathbed beside them. Someone had to guide these people, no matter how it hurt to see their suffering.

Doyoung remembered the first soul whose death left him at a loss all his own.

“I’m dead?”

“Yes...you’re Yeri, right?”—the tiny thing nodded—“then yes, you are.”

A pinch of a frown wrinkled her forehead. “I just turned six.”

“That’s very nice.”

“I got a pony…” her confused eyes began to turn slowly back to the scene behind her, but Doyoung quickly reached a hand to her tiny cheek, halting the motion of her head. It was never good for a soul to look back at their death scene. It would not help her to turn and see the man standing over her body and that of her pet, knife dripping blood and fearful, frantic rage in his eyes. It would not do.

“You can have another pony, where we’re going,” Doyoung remembered promising, not knowing how he’d fulfill the words. Not knowing how to scrape the anger from his own self and remain indifferent.

It was lucky she was small and unable to see as he walked slightly behind her into the afterlife. His eyes burned and blackened around the rims for the first time, then.

Nevertheless, most generally Doyoung conducted his reapings on time, on schedule, and without much incident. Personally beneficial exceptions and instances of crackling charcoal eyes proved mostly irregular, and infrequent, and Doyoung could perform his duties in his sleep, assuming that was a thing he ever did.

That was, until he met Lee Donghyuck.

-

 

Doyoung stared into the crib, and a pudgy, round-eyed baby with soft, warm-tinted skin stared back.

The reaper blinked, and frowned, and looked at his list. And the baby. And his list again.

“What the fuck?” he asked no one in particular. The baby certainly did not answer him.

Pushing his hood back to scratch at his hair—recently cut short—in confusion, Doyoung puzzled over the list. The name was there, Lee Donghyuck, but the reaping date did not make sense.

“Hold on one moment,” he told the baby, who only quirked his head in response. Then Doyoung disappeared.

Taeil jumped in surprise, dropping a cup of tea, when Doyoung appeared suddenly at his desk.

“Hyung, there’s an error in my list.”

“God, Doyoung, give me a warning…” the supervisor breathed, hand over the side of his chest where someone living would have a heart. “I doubt that, but show me.”

Doyoung did so.

_Lee Donghyuck. June 6, 2001, or June 6, 2002, or June 6, 2003, or—_

The pattern continued to a ‘ _see more’_ line, and if Doyoung hovered a finger over the swirly black ink the dates only went further.

“Oh, no, that’s correct,” Taeil confirmed.

Doyoung’s mouth opened, then shut. “How do I…” he finally asked.

Taeil hovered a finger, brushing the indefinite list down to the bottom, and pointed at an asterisk. “There, that.”

_*death date pending first loss of contest with assigned reaper, Kim “Doyoung” Dongyoung, to be performed annually on indicated soul’s birthday. Contest rules and terms to-be-determined on reaper’s discretion, at the time of contending. Other terms and conditions may apply._

“What the...how is a baby supposed to beat me in a contest?!” asked Doyoung, his mind reeling.

Taeil shrugged, smiling. “I don’t know! Should I let Childrens’ know to have another space prepared?”

The image of the pudgy, sweet-faced baby hovered in Doyoung’s mind’s eye. “Wait on that,” he replied, and disappeared.

Nothing had changed in the crib when Doyoung poked his head over the side and peered down at the baby again. The big, dark chocolate eyes met his once more, and Lee Donghyuck burbled something unintelligible from tiny pink lips.

Doyoung leaned back, taking in a sharp breath, and glanced around the room full of pastel colors and baby-sized toys, the photographs hanging from clothespins in layered rows along the wall. The baby smiled dazzlingly in every single one. There was a row of empty pins on the bottom, just waiting for new pictures.

A soft, repetitive chirp-like sound drew his eyes back to the crib.

The baby had begun to hiccup, wiggling his chubby arms around with each little clipped breath.

“Oh…” Doyoung breathed, watching. Then, he made a decision. “First one to hiccup, wins,” he whispered.

Donghyuck’s breath hitched with another small spasm, the pattern continuing. The reaper didn’t even inhale.

Then, Doyoung smiled. “Good job. See you in a year, Donghyuck.”

Taeil was still cleaning tea off his cloak as Doyoung strode through the office a moment later.

“No baby?” he asked, pressing a handkerchief against the black cloth.

“He won,” declared Doyoung.

“Wow...really? That’s amazing!”

Doyoung nodded, picking up a quill dabbed with ink from his own desk and crossing a thin line over _June 6, 2001_. As he did so, Donghyuck’s name faded from the list—he assumed it would reappear in a year’s time.

“I’m as surprised as you are,” Doyoung replied flatly, and blew on the ink to encourage it to dry. Unrolling a bit more of his list, his eyes scanned the names and their normal, static death dates. No one else but Donghyuck showed something so strange, and he wondered why.

But the other names required his attention. Giving Taeil a tight smile, Doyoung headed for the next person on his list. The faint sound of infant hiccups seemed to remain in his mind, for some reason.

-

 

“Ah, so it’s you, you’re the one who’s been... _bending_ the rules for the human boy.”

Doyoung inhaled lengthily through his nose—more of a patience-gathering habit than a need—and turned to the person addressing him. _This is why I don’t attend social functions,_ he reminded himself, feeling his nerves fray. The last thing he liked was deflecting questions about his actions as a reaper.

The comment came from someone Doyoung was not familiar with, but whom he immediately felt he wanted to… punch. Or something. He held a wine glass with practiced poise, and possessed the kind of handsomeness one couldn’t have hoped to buy in life, but that a few were lucky to be blessed with.

“Well, in my opinion he’s won every contest fair and square. So I don’t know quite what you mean Mister...um, Mister?”

“Oh, it’s actually Lord.”

Doyoung’s eyebrows lifted of their own accord.

“Is it now?”

“Yes, Lord Luck. You must be familiar with the concept,” the man, or daemon of sorts, offered. His lips quirked pleasantly as he sipped his drink, apparently eager to ignore the other various spirits and numen present inside the charmingly lit pagoda.

Doyoung _really_ hated these functions.

 _Well. Luck would explain it,_ thought Doyoung.

He forced a semblance of a smile. “Ah...my, what a… pleasure…”

“Pleasure is all mine, reaper. I’d love to know more about the boy who’s been siphoning more than his fair share of my favor.”

“That sounds awfully like a behavior of the living, Your Lordship,” replied Doyoung, his tone decidedly flat, “and, as you are aware, that’s entirely not my department.”

Annoyingly, the daemon laughed, twinkles glittering at the corners of his eyes.

“If you’ll excuse me, my supervisor seems to want to speak with me…” spotting Taeil from the corner of his eye, Doyoung angled to extricate himself from the conversation, willing the senior reaper to make eye contact and engage with him. Unfortunately, Taeil turned aside only a few paces away, greeting a nearby seraphim instead.

Doyoung let the hand he’d slightly raised drop, and sighed at the light chuckle behind him.

“Ah, I suppose you’re still free to chat after all. Lucky me.”

With grit teeth, Doyoung turned slowly to face the grin he was surely growing to dislike. Lucky indeed.

-

 

Four-year-old Donghyuck was a whiz at coloring inside the lines. Doyoung knew this, as he watched the boy complete a picture of a giraffe far more quickly and neatly than Doyoung’s elephant came into shape—the more massive animal seemed to have an unseemly gash of purple crayon escaping the outline of its back.

“You win.”

“Okay.” The little child agreed easily, pulling another coloring page in front of him without so much as looking up at Doyoung.

It didn’t bother the reaper. He didn’t want to disturb the child’s life any more than totally necessary, so the less attention he paid Doyoung, the better.

Standing from his cross-legged position, Doyoung stifled the urge to pat the fluffy head of black hair, and simply marked off his scroll as usual.

“Goodbye, Hyuckie, see you next year.”

The boy waved a tiny, chubby hand, flapping the appendage up and down while haphazardly scribbling a background of orange all around a picture of a lizard. “Bye bye.”

As he vanished from the spot and made his way back to his office, Doyoung smiled to himself. His days were mostly indistinguishable, mixed with the heartwarming and heartbreaking, but he nearly always liked June 6th. Though he was always aware of the current earth-date, that one was still his favorite year-to-year.

At his desk, Doyoung took a seat and made sure no one was nearby before carefully withdrawing from his cloak a folded page. He smoothed and flattened the paper painstakingly, and then neatly taped it to an open space on the wall to the side. It was just the right height to admire easily while completing paperwork.

“My, that is a masterfully drawn giraffe,” a voice suddenly observed.

Doyoung whipped his head around and accidentally banged his knee on the desk, his mood sinking as the jolt of pain smarted.

The Lord of Luck smiled, of course. “Did you make that yourself, or did you have help?”

“What do you want?”

“Certainly not to bother you, reaper,” replied the daemon, taking a seat across from Doyoung without invitation. Consistent with his appearance at the now distant party, he wore a rather stylish, navy three-piece suit,—and was that a metallic fuschia paisley lining?—the jacket of which he took care to unbutton as he sat, so as not to crease.

Doyoung rubbed his knee. “Well, you _are_ bothering me.”

“You know, it’s the strangest thing,” he continued, ignoring Doyoung, “every sixth of June, a couple of my reports come back all unbalanced.”

“You mentioned that last time. I told you, I’m not doing anything wrong.”

The daemon crossed his long legs, picking up a quill from Doyoung’s desk and twirling it distractedly. “Not saying you are. I’m just trying to figure out the reason for it.”

Doyoung took a moment to glance at the giraffe coloring page, its shocking shade of teal and pink spots. He tapped his fingers against the hardwood and hummed.

“Donghyuck is an unusual case. I’m sure the irregularity has effects beyond reaping.”

“Perhaps. Maybe I should inquire with the Ministry of Fates.”

A spike of concern surged through Doyoung’s chest. “That seems unnecessary.”

“I said maybe.”

The daemon’s gaze matched with Doyoung’s for a few moments, it’s weight both calculating and evaluating. Then his eyes softened, and he relaxed somewhat, leaning back in the chair.

“It’s no real problem for now, so I’ll just keep an eye on it.”

 _On you._ Doyoung could read between the lines enough to hear the implication. It surprised him that such a person had interest in his work at all, that their responsibilities intersected for some reason. His business was escorting souls. What part had luck in that at all? He’d never even encountered this entity of the afterlife before, his knowledge of it only cursory at best.

“I thought it was _Lady_ Luck…” he asked, the thought coming to him suddenly.

“Well sure, it was. This was a promotion for me, of course.”

“Oh! It works like that?”

“Yes, before then I was just _Sir-Decent-Karma_ , a minor luck-ling, but her ladyship decided to step down and, well, when I see an opportunity, I go for it, so now I’m Lord—”

“...I know you’re bullshitting me, and I hope it’s fun for you.”

“Extremely.”

Doyoung rubbed at his temple, vexed. “And you really go by that? Lord Luck?”

The daemon’s eyes creased cat-like as he smiled. “Well no, most here just call me Johnny.”

-

 

“That’s him?”

“Yes...that’s Donghyuck!”

Johnny stood beside Doyoung at the edge of the park, the tails of his ivory suit jacket fluttering in the light breeze. A stone’s-throw away, the human boy lay on his back, arms crossed behind his head and kicking his feet against a picnic blanket while finding shapes in the clouds, innocently unaware of the momentary disappearance of his parents or the two immortals watching him.

It hadn’t been Doyoung’s exact plan for the day, to have Johnny tag along, but perhaps if the god-ish entity experienced the wonder of Donghyuck for himself, he’d stop dropping by Doyoung’s desk all the time to bother him about it.

“Doyoung...I’m sorry, I don’t see what’s so special about him. He’s just another human.”

Or not.

“How can you...you can’t see it?” huffed Doyoung, incredulous. “But it’s so...he’s so _bright_ , Johnny.”

“He’s a child.”

“Yes! And he isn’t afraid of me! He isn’t afraid of _anything_. He runs at everything full speed, he’s so smart, his eyes are full of light like he swallowed this world’s sun, he—”

“Ah.”

“You understand now?”

“Oh, yes. Do you pay his mother child support or is it more of a co-parenting operation? You really do have the short stick for visitation rights.”

“Okay, fuck you too.” Shaking back his cloak sleeves to reveal the two small bottles in his hands, Doyoung cast a weary look at the warden of fortune. “Fine, exist in your boring impartiality. I’m going to go wish Donghyuck a happy eighth birthday and see who can blow bigger bubbles.”

Johnny pursed his lips and quirked an eyebrow. “I bet not you, Thin Lips.”

“ _First_ of all,” Doyoung started, voice pitched as he swung back ready to fight— then stopped. Of course, Johnny was already gone.

-

 

Reaper work fit the category that Doyoung’s colleague Sicheng in Inhuman Resources would call “individual contributor,” or, as Doyoung translated it: working alone. That didn’t concern him in the slightest, of course, since he rarely required assistance to escort a soul to its final resting place, or afterlife assignment. But that didn’t mean he went completely unsupervised.

“Your record for the past five years is stunning, as usual, Doyoung,” Taeil said, flipping through the pages of the reaper’s performance review. “No issues with timing, complaints from the deceased, or backlogged paperwork. Impeccable.”

“Thank you.”

Taeil pulled the papers together, attempting to tap the stack against his desk and settle them neatly, but losing a few in the process. He didn’t seem to notice. “The Reaping Office is indebted to you for your organizational help, as always.”

Doyoung accepted this as a concluding note, and made to stand.

“Ah, before you go, what ever happened to that infant with the undetermined death year? I’m curious when he passed on.”

A lump formed in Doyoung’s throat. He pushed it down. He had nothing to feel guilty about.

“Oh he’s...still living, actually.”

“Really?” Surprise met with confusion on his supervisor’s face. “You mean you’ve been losing contests to a baby?”

“Well, he’s more of a child now, a surprisingly talented one I’d say, perhaps gifted even… honestly they grow up so fast, you know? Just last year—”

Taeil held up a hand, silencing Doyoung, and his smile seemed worrisomely blank. “That’s as much of an update as I need, thank you. It does give me a bit of pause, so I’ll bring up the matter with the Director. For this year, though, please try to make sure the challenge has aged with the boy, would you? Just in case there’s an inquiry.”

Although the afterlife typically maintained an imperceptible sort of lukewarm temperature, Doyoung felt a creeping chill. He’d never had an inquiry before. Leaving his conversation with Taeil didn’t remove the feeling, and the closer to June he went the more Doyoung’s anxiety increased. He started planning a real competition.

Then Donghyuck turned nine, and seemed to actually see Doyoung for the first time. Doyoung faltered, and lost a game made up with sidewalk chalk. The boy suggested more prudent clothing. Doyoung swore an oath he’d go harder on him the next year.

The reaper failed his oath. Ten-year-old Donhyuck asked what name to call him by, if they were to keep seeing one another.

Floundering, Doyoung chose the most impossible contest he could imagine for the next year, a sure loss, and yet simultaneously gave Donghyuck a hint to prepare for it.

He couldn’t afford to let him win. He couldn’t imagine seeing him lose. He couldn’t—he couldn’t.

-

 

The reflection pool—very aptly named in Doyoung’s opinion—held a gently shifting, blue-grey version of his face wearing a doleful expression. Although Doyoung had left his annual meeting with Donghyuck in an overall good mood, as he sat staring into the pond a short walk from his office he felt it slipping away, his mind solely focused on Donghyuck’s words ringing in his memory. He’d just meant to tease him when he first walked up, joking about being prepared, but the conversation had spiraled quickly in a far more somber direction.

_“Well what do you expect, hyung? I’m thirteen and have the strongest existential dread of anyone I know.”_

Dread? Doyoung didn’t like that. It didn’t fit, didn’t correlate with his image of the boy, who to him was light and eternal optimism and fearless determination.

Yet Donghyuck himself admitted to being fearful, and it was visible in the expression he’d had as they had lined up to race—a serious maturity far beyond his years. Hadn’t Doyoung done everything so far to prevent that, to protect him and keep him innocent? What more could he do? He searched the placid waters, asking for some kind of answer.

Nothing changed, really. Nothing in strict truth moved or spoke or gave him direction, and yet Doyoung felt the echo of a whisper in his ear—

_You could save him._

If only he knew how.

-

 

“I can’t believe they got a dog. I told them I wanted a sister so many times, and she got a dog instead! A dog, hyung! Does that make sense??”

Doyoung withheld the chuckle he wanted to let out, for Jaemin’s sake. “Wouldn’t you feel more jealous of a new sister than a dog?”

The boy rolled his eyes, speaking with a pout. “No way, I wanted someone to make dreams for.”

“Well, put your effort into making them for your mother then, instead of making me to take you there so you can rearrange the refrigerator magnets and give her a fright.”

Jaemin blushed. “I didn’t know it would scare her.”

“Who have you been scaring?” Johnny asked, coming into view as they neared the reaper office. The sight of him was unexpected; Doyoung hadn’t seen the daemon for a number of years.

“No one!”

“His mother. See if I take you out of the afterworld anytime soon again!”

Johnny frowned. “You’re not a ghost, Jaemin. Hauntings aren’t your division.”

The boy, wide-smiled, charming, and eternally stuck around age fifteen, flashed a grin at Johnny. “I wasn’t _haunting_ , we just visited after I helped hyung judge his reaping contest. It was casual.”

Doyoung cleared his throat, keeping his eyes trained on the toes of his shoes rather than meeting the look he knew Johnny was giving him. He could feel the disapproving stare.

“I’m sure it was. You’d better get back to the dream workshop. Kun’s in a mood, someone invented a new sleeping pill and the orders coming in are mess.”

Jaemin groaned and Johnny squeezed the boy’s shoulder, patting it once before the boy gave him a smile and ran off. He waved to Doyoung as he went, and the reaper weakly waved back.

“Doyoung.”

“I have things to get to, it was nice seeing you, Johnny.”

“I’ll need a moment of your time, I’m afraid. Your office?”

There was no shaking him, Doyoung knew that much. As they settled at his desk, he cast a glance at the colored giraffe to reassure himself. “Well, what do you need?”

“You took a soul with you?”

“As I understand it, the nature of the contests is under my jurisdiction solely. Nothing in the code says I can’t bring a judge along.”

Johnny half-frowned. “Souls are not supposed to leave the afterworld.”

“We do.”

“You know we aren’t just souls anymore, Doyoung. Jaemin’s meant to be here— but that’s beside the point anyway. The fact that you needed a judge—”

“He was very objective.”

“Was the contest hard to judge?” Johnny pressed, “Would another judge have called it differently? Was it something either of you could reasonably have won?”

Doyoung realized his knee was bouncing in agitation, making an increasingly loud tapping sound, and forced his heel to the floor. Where was he _going_ with this…

The look on Johnny’s face was a pained one, lacking his usual jovial, teasing glimmer. “Doyoung,” he started carefully, “you remember my reports? The ones that don’t seem to make sense?”

“No.” He did.

“Sure you do. I found the problem with them and June sixth. It seems they don’t know how to categorize the data of a contest so heavily set in one person’s favor, when it shouldn’t be.”

Doyoung let out a nervous scoff. “What, none of them calibrated casinos?”

“That’s not the same.”

“I’ve told you—“

“Doyoung.”

The reaper stopped, forcing himself to quit fiddling with the stack of reports on his desk and meet the daemon’s eyes. He didn’t like what he saw there, the expression hitting him with something that settled at the bottom of his stomach and churned around like an ouroboros after its own tail.

Johnny pressed a hand to his brow, drawing it back through his dark hair and sighing. “I wanted to avoid this, Doyoung. I wanted to never have to bring it up to anyone, because I think I have an idea what it means to you—“

“I assure you, you don’t.”

“—and I take no pleasure in filing reports. Fates know, I hate paperwork. But I can’t keep overlooking it, not when I have fifteen years worth of imbalanced accounts to answer for. Actions have consequences.”

There was a time—or rather, an extended period of existence—when Doyoung simply cowed to statements like that. Early on as a reaper he followed laws to the letter, when he was an instrumental piece in reordering their kind for a newer age. But when you’ve seen all the possible kinds of circumstances that cause you to be there, reaping a newly deceased soul, you learn something, Doyoung had found. And that is that, often enough, the consequences are undeserved...and other times the actions are just worth them.

In his peripheral vision, Doyoung saw a deflated orange balloon pinned above the flyer for upcoming company events on his cork board. His mind’s eye filled with the image of a six year old’s birthday party; streamers hung from every available surface, confetti flung about with absolutely no care for future vacuuming pains, and enough balloons floating near the ceiling that their gently bumping about around the lights must’ve been a fire hazard. The decorations did nothing, however, to outshine the guest of honor. Four teeth short and about just as many feet tall, Donghyuck beamed at his birthday cake and basked in the presence of the party around him, for him. Not every child turned six on the sixth day of the sixth month of the year, in the sixth year of the millennium.

The memory was almost physically warm.

It was a place Doyoung was not supposed to be. He’d already had his game with the child, already catalogued his loss at Simon Says and pretended to be a sore loser. But the desire to see a little more of Donghyuck’s life hadn’t simmered away like he’d normally forced it to, and Doyoung had cheated—he’d hung around. Invisibly and from a safe distance, Doyoung had watched Donghyuck blow out the candles—he’d missed just one, and had to endure teasing about future soulmates because of it—and fought a smile as Donghyuck’s best friend Jeno smashed a palm full of frosting onto the birthday boy’s cheek. Hours passed, filled with party games and singing and children hyped on sugar, until there was only Donghyuck left, a motionless bundle of blankets and new toys on the couch where he’d passed out the second his last friend said goodbye.

Maybe Doyoung shouldn’t have stood there just to the side as his parents scooped him up from the cushions, cooing adoration at his sleeping face, and carried him to his bed. Maybe Doyoung shouldn’t have looked around the living room, drinking in the ghosts of the celebration and wishing he could have been a part of it. Maybe, he shouldn’t have picked up the limp balloon, little more than a thin rubbery shell, and put it in his pocket with the ribbon hanging out.

Maybe Doyoung shouldn’t have, but he had. Because the consequences? It was worth them.

“Yes, actions are annoying like that. What am I in for, then? Compulsory re-instructional classes on protocols and regulations? A demotion?” Doyoung asked, settling into acceptance of whatever was to come.

Johnny twisted his lips, looking fairly sour. “Probably an inquiry and then a Ministry investigation.”

Doyoung jerked forward in his seat. “Full scale?!”

“I’m afraid so. At least, if this gets the same treatment that similar circumstances have.”

What would be considered similar circumstances, Doyoung couldn’t guess.

“How...how long will that take?”

“Who can say?” Johnny shrugged, waving a hand. “Maybe a day, maybe ten years, who knows. This is the afterlife, time is all but meaningless. But it will happen. Unfortunately, I had to submit the report already, so this was more of a heads up than anything else. Once it’s officially underway, someone else will be sent to speak with you. You have a lot more to worry about from them than from me.”

The ouroboros in Doyoung’s stomach caught its tail, and swallowed it. He felt queasy.

-

 

As Doyoung had already decided that, having made his bed, he might as well get damn comfortable in it, he felt no need to change his strategy for handling Donghyuck’s birthdays. He treated Donghyuck’s sixteenth accordingly, metaphorically snuggling up under the covers of his decisions since there was yet to be anyone knocking on his office door and demanding answers.

Until there was.

He’d never really thought to describe a knock as dainty, and yet the sound of knuckles against the doorframe was just that, causing Doyoung to glance up with interest.

“Doyoung, right? May I come in?”

Doyoung quirked an eyebrow at the slim man, eyeing his smartly pressed pants and crisp button-down. He also appeared to be wearing suspenders which, paired with the actual pocket protector safeguarding his shirt from the pen sticking out from it, inspired in Doyoung a very sudden and specific kind of fear.

He set down his own pen, and folded his hands carefully. “Certainly, Mister…?”

“Just Taeyong, will do. I’ll just take this chair, if you don’t mind.”

At least it wasn’t _Lord._

“Please do.”

He did, and with a clean manilla file in hand that he then opened into his lap. “I hope this isn’t a bad time,” he began, “I know reapers are busy, what with how people die all the time.” He paused, looking up with wide eyes. “Oh no, that sounded callous, didn’t it? I’m so sorry, I just meant...well, people do die an awful lot, don’t they? Oh that wasn’t better...Kun is always saying I’m too blunt…”

“No, that’s...it’s alright,” assured Doyoung. “It’s not a bad time.” It wasn’t per se a good time either, but he doubted there would be a better one.

Taeyong smiled hesitantly, assumedly in relief. “Oh good. In that case, I’m here to start the investigation into your reaping malpractice. I have a list of all the evidence against you, and I’ll need to go over each item. Also, we’ll be collecting evidence from your office, should there be any.”

Doyoung eyed the recently empty space where once hung a balloon and a picture of a giraffe. They were somewhere else now. He silently thanked his small moment of self-preservative foresight for taking that action in advance.

“That’s actually incredibly blunt.”

“Oh. I suppose it is.”

“Who are you with?” asked Doyoung, in an attempt to ease the man back out of his sudden look of disappointment. “I mean, when you reference ‘we’...”

He perked back up a bit, sitting straight once again and jutting out his chin proudly. “Right, oh yes, I’m Taeyong with Eternal Audit. I should have said that.”

“Eternal Audit.”

Doyoung could not recall his past life. He didn’t know if he’d ever encountered someone like Taeyong, or something like an auditor. It was a very, very long time ago. But he’d met enough humans and seen enough of life to know that he’d much rather this wasn’t happening.

“Yes, we look into questionable matters in the daily function of the afterlife. We’re umbrellaed under the Ministry of Fates, actually.”

“That isn’t surprising,” muttered Doyoung.

“I’m sorry?”

“You probably aren’t. Why don’t we get on with it, then? Might as well get it over with.”

Nodding, Taeyong pulled a series of papers out and began flipping through them. “Oh, quite right. Now, I have spreadsheets from the earth year two-thousand through the present from the Department of Fortune, and a few eternal-mails describing the case of a one Lee Donghyuck. Care to start with the data or the e-mails?”

Doyoung sorely wished he had a drink. “Just hit me with it.”

-

 

“Hyung, what’s suspension?”

“It’s like vacation, except you hate it and you can’t do anything fun, but you’re also not allowed to go back to work, unless of course someone decides they need to you to do just the most tedious things only, and while you do they over-supervise you and breathe down your neck the whole time.”

Jaemin stared at Doyoung with somewhat of a loose jaw, his hands paused in pulling out white-topped dandelions from the field overlooking the river. “I don’t get it.”

Doyoung patted his head. “You work in the dream workshop, there’s nothing to worry about. Dreams have no stipulations.”

“That’s not what Kun says…” whined the boy, flicking at one of the weeds until all the fronds flitted off and away. “We have to learn all kinds of rules. No obvious entrance points. No previews. No legible writing or running without feeling like your legs are made of lead. Rules rules rules.”

“Only so you can break them later. Don’t worry.”

“Did you learn the rules of your job so you could break them, too?”

“Hmm.” The scene in front of Doyoung was so familiar, even if he had to reach ages back in his memory for it. Sitting in the very same spot, doing nothing with his afterlife, then offered something to pass the centuries. It took him a handful of those to learn how to do it right, too, just as it would take Jaemin longer to learn how to make the perfect daydream. But meeting Donghyuck had changed things irreparably.

“No,” he said gently, “I think I broke them and then learned that the rules sucked anyway.”

Jaemin nodded sagely, as the words resonated with him. “Cool. I’m gonna tell Kun I want to do that instead.”

“I do not suggest that.”

Suspension from the dream workshop was probably not the same as reaper suspension. It was probably not being cut down to one dream every handful of days, like Doyoung was cut to one reaping, with only supervised paperwork otherwise.

At least they couldn’t stop him from meeting Donghyuck. Some greater, deeper, more eternal law seemed to rule cases like his, and even Taeil had confirmed that Doyoung would still perform his contests as usual. In retaliation, Doyoung had planned something downright innane for the boy’s seventeenth, something that couldn’t possibly ignite dread in anyone.

“Jaeminnie, you were around for the internet, right? Did you use the online video hosting websites?”

Jaemin simply grinned and pulled out a phone from his back pocket.

-

 

Just a handful of days remained before Doyoung would go visit for Donghyuck’s eighteenth birthday. The suspension provided him ample time to plan, and he’d decided black jack seemed like a cool and mature game by which to ring in Donghyuck’s adulthood. It had flair. And maybe, if he could stretch his luck far enough, Doyoung could even accompany Donghyuck to do something like buy alcohol, or a lottery ticket, or see an adult-rated movie. All of those things were a little trickier, granted, but he’d pushed the limits so much farther than he’d already thought possible.

“Big day tomorrow,” said a voice somewhere over Doyoung’s shoulder. There were only a handful of souls milling around the nicely manicured park, but Doyoung hadn’t exactly expected to be spoken to, so he startled a little.

He turned, and the sight of Johnny brought a mixture of frustration and something else. He couldn’t quite name what.

“Yes, well, coming of age really is an occasion, from what I know. But it’s actually tomorrow after next.”

Johnny took a seat at the picnic table, opposite Doyoung, and observed him with light confusion on his charmingly round face. “I’m sure you mean Donghyuck, as always. But I meant tomorrow, as in your investigation review. Big day?”

It was a big day. Yet somehow, one that slipped Doyoung’s mind.

“Oh.”

Unexpectedly, Johnny reached across the table and laid a hand over Doyoung’s arm. “You may not believe this, but I really hope it goes well for you. I’d much rather see you continue on as you have been.”

Doyoung didn’t particularly believe him, and said so, which didn’t seem to phase Johnny much at all. And the next day, as Doyoung made his way into the room in the Ministry Central building, the one with the very long, oval table and many chairs, he was surprised to see Johnny there and see him offer a nod of encouragement.

Then Taeyong, amidst a host of “oh”s and “well, I suppose”s and “quite”s, delivered a piercing and thorough review of all Doyoung’s transgressions, to the point that he reminded Doyoung of a few he’d forgotten.

“You may provide a defense, Reaper Doyoung,” Junmyeon, head of the review panel, had then said, turning to the reaper with a measured gaze.

“Right, naturally,” Doyoung said. “Um. Yeah, so, I just didn’t think Donghyuck deserved to die as a baby, and I have continued to think that as he has grown up.”

When he didn’t continue, Junmyeon hummed. “Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

It was not, apparently, enough.

He protested the decision, of course, since the rules clearly stated that the contests were up to the reaper’s discretion. But unfortunately Yuta had spent even longer being an afterlife attorney than Doyoung had being a reaper, and his logic for interpreting “reaper” as not only Doyoung but anyone above him in the chain of command was airtight and crystal sharp. So when they took the contest planning out of Doyoung’s hands and issued him one instead, he was able to say very little about it.

“Even odds from now on, Doyoung,” Junmyeon had ruled unequivocally. “We’re administrators in this afterlife, we can’t be altering things as we like. Leave determinations to the Fates. Oh, and please, wear your uniform.”

Doyoung could feel Johnny following him as he left, the daemon keeping pace behind him most of the way back. He had half a thought to ask the Lord of Luck where _he_ kept office, and _why_ he wasn’t going that direction instead of rubbing it in that Doyoung had been thoroughly scolded, at the cost of a whole human life.

That deep in thought, he nearly ran into Jaemin, barely avoiding knocking the basket of dream fragments out of the boy’s hands.

“Whoa! Close one, hyung,” the dream maker laughed, “I almost dropped like fifty baby unicorns. And one slug. I don’t know who that’s for but I’m kinda concerned.”

“Apologies, Jaeminnie. I wasn’t looking.”

Jaemin waved a hand, the basket wobbling again in his other before he quickly replaced the first. “It’s fine! How’s suspension going? Is it fun yet? Oh hey, don’t you go see Hyuck soon? You’ll tell him I said ‘hi’ this time, right?”

Doyoung didn’t think that was likely. He looked at the shuttlecock in his hand, a mess of tassels, and sighed. Of all the games they could have chosen, they had to pick one he couldn’t pretend to be bad at, or one more boringly traditional.

“Sorry, Minnie, I don’t think it’s going to be a very good visit.”

“Why—“

“Jaemin, I’m sure those fragments are being missed right now, don’t you think?” Johnny suggested, coming to stand beside Doyoung. “Why don’t you and the reaper catch up later?”

Jaemin grinned brightly. “Yeah, you’re right. I do wanna see what this slug is for anyway. See ya later!”

Doyoung stayed still as he left, rolling the toy around in his hand and waiting for whatever it was Johnny felt the need to say. The ether sky of the afterlife, sort of purpleish and nebulaic, gently churned above them and Doyoung thought it looked a little bluer than usual.

“Nothing says he’ll lose this time for sure, you know?”

“I know.”

“And if he does...well, wouldn’t you be happy to see him here? Couldn’t that be a good thing?”

Doyoung laughed, his mouth stretching wide and feeling like it conveyed the incredulity he felt. How could he explain to a semi-immortal being the innate tragedy of death?

“No, it would not! He’s got stuff to do! He’s going to college to study music theory, he’s going to be a famous musician, or maybe a producer, and he has _friends_ to keep up with, not to mention falling in love hopefully. So no, it would not be a good thing, not for him to lose all that!”

Johnny withdrew his hands from the pockets of his neatly ironed maroon slacks and clasped his long fingers, his arms hanging low. He nodded very, very slowly.

He said, “Well then, I hope that luck is truly in his favor this time.”

“You mean that? For his sake?”

“No, for yours.”

-

 

Black. In all the broad expanse of time Doyoung had ferried souls in their passing to the next plane of existence, he’d never quite felt so utterly surrounded, consumed, and overwhelmed by the color and all it represented. Black; the heavy, pitch dark cloak encompassing him, draping past his hands and swallowing his face with the wide hood. Black; the darkening skies swollen with rain and weeping, dulling the air around the park. Black; the future Doyoung couldn’t see, hidden behind a veil of chance, uncertainty swirled with fear.

The existence of a grim reaper...black.

“What’s with the get-up, hyung?”

And then, color. So much of it that Doyoung felt his resolve begin to seep out the moment Donghyuck spoke, and he had to look at him indirectly. It was too difficult to see his warm skin, his cheerful blue rain boots and yellow jacket, to see the way the rain ran over his shoulders like it was trying to hug him. Doyoung would’ve liked to hug him. So, easier not to look, easier to stick to the verdict charged to him, that way.

“I’m a grim reaper, Donghyuck. This is what we wear.”

It pricked at Doyoung’s oh so thin, weak skin to hear Donghyuck ask what the year’s game would be; he guessed as he knew from experience, silly games and nothing worth fearing. He spoke like he trusted Doyoung to protect him, not to take his soul.

Doyoung had brought his scythe, and hated the way he could taste Donghyuck’s fear the moment he saw it and his perception changed. It tasted like betrayal.

In one hand, Doyoung squeezed the stringy tassels dangling from the shuttlecock. It remained dry, hidden under his cloak, waiting to act as judge of their contest, waiting to damn them both. He had every intention of extending that hand and initiating the game, be it a win or loss.

He stood up. Stretched out a hand. Stretched out the wrong one. Felt like sobbing, realizing his own incredible weakness, looking at his nearly translucent skin and wondering if Donghyuck could see right through it too, right to the very core of him that had no guiding purpose left but one human boy. He was rock; stubbornly disobeying the directive of his existence. He was paper; frail everytime that it counted. He was scissors; cutting and burning bridges to keep one built that was never meant to last.

If only Donghyuck hadn’t then suggested this was somehow his fault. Then maybe Doyoung could have kept it all in.

When Doyoung had learned he could still feel pain in the afterlife, he’d been angry at first. And then, even angrier to learn he’d still experience anger, too. So the pain that grew and flared in the sockets of his eyes as he ranted, raged against his own powerlessness, was not an unfamiliar one anymore. He felt the skin burn and crack, dry into hot charcoal he couldn’t stop from appearing, and reveal for once the black that was internal.

Objectively he knew everyone died sometime. And sometimes it was tragic, and sometimes it was a relief, and every time Doyoung understood that their time had come. But the cosmic unfairness of Donghyuck’s life he simply could not accept.

Doyoung felt the words in his core when he said, “—you’re just a _kid.”_

“...I...I really do have to die one of these times, don’t I?”

Yes. That was the answer. It was the answer to anyone who asked the same question. But Doyoung couldn’t say it, because the longer he stood there the clearer it became that Doyoung was out of his element and had been for eighteen years. His mistake was in thinking he’d ever be able to answer Donghyuck like he’d answer any other human. Because in truth, no other human would ask that question; his role, with extremely rare exception, was to guide souls whose time had _already come._ He was to appear at that instance, not before, certainly not to decide the timing himself. So was it any surprise, after spending all this time with someone not actually at the brink, that Doyoung didn’t want to deal the blow? Bartering for a delay was one thing, contending to live at all was another entirely.

How many times did he have to think Donghyuck didn’t deserve it?

“Donghyuck...I’m sorry.” For so, so much.

“Is this it? Is this the last one?”

_“Nothing says he’ll lose this time for sure, you know?”_

Doyoung took the echo of Johnny’s encouragement and offered it to Donghyuck, explained to him the strange circumstances he’d been in the whole time.

“You’ve been...cheating for me?” he asked in response, looking shocked.

Of course, Donghyuck _would_ focus on that part.

“When you were a baby, I made up the dumbest contests. _‘Laugh first, Donghyuckie. Which of us is better at being a cute infant? Oh you are? Wow. I’m bested. Whoever is actually alive, wins. Oh no, I’ve lost again.’_ It was so easy to lose like that.” Looking at him as he spoke, Doyoung could still see the tiny button of baby-Donghyuck’s nose, his smile when he’d lost a couple teeth, the squishable chub of his cheeks. “Doesn’t matter, I can’t anymore. Fair games only, from now on.”

“Hyung…”

He could still see baby Donghyuck, he always would, but more than that he could see the young man as he was now, in all his vitality and potential, and looking at Doyoung with an emotion he nearly couldn’t make sense of.

Was that...pity?

In the moment that Donghyuck began to reach out his own hand, Doyoung realized the human wasn’t thinking of his impending death, but of the reaper’s well-being, and the overwhelming gravity of the notion of Donghyuck impossibly, foolishly, ridiculously caring for _him_ at some level in return?…well.

“Ah, you picked paper. I do tend to do rock a little too often. Maybe this wasn’t as fair as I thought.” Reapers probably didn’t have hearts exactly, but something inside Doyoung raced as he cheated one more time, without any hesitation. He felt like running. He felt like _screaming._ And he had something he _had_ to do, as soon as possible, so he retrieved his useless weapon and tried to maintain an aura of calm as he passed Donghyuck by to leave, with only a momentary pause.

“I’ll see you next year, Donghyuck. Stay healthy, till then!”

He almost had to laugh when Donghyuck called out to him, stopping him in his tracks. But Doyoung turned to listen anyway, because he would always, always turn for him.

“I’m going to beat you, hyung! Every time! I’ll win them all!”

And there it was. Doyoung smiled, because he could hardly do otherwise. He’d made his decision, but Donghyuck solidified it.

“Of course, of course you will. I always lose against you.”

Doyoung took the determination in Donghyuck’s eyes and made it his own, returning to the afterlife and aiming toward his destination with burning intent.

“And I always will.”

-

 

The trick for finding people and places in the afterlife was sort of similar to looking for an item when you’d lost it; taking into account all the places you knew it wouldn’t be, and then going wherever was left. Unfortunately this left a multitude of options, simply due to the sheer size of the afterlife and it’s unlimited contents, but Doyoung could narrow down a good bit based on his fairly extensive experience. For this reason, although he’d never been there before, it didn’t take him too long to find the Department of Fortune, and within it the office of a particularly bothersome Lord of Luck.

Doyoung did not knock before charging into the room, letting the door smack against the wall perpendicular to it and then swing shut with a decisive thud. He took in the surrounding room only peripherally, vaguely aware of the contrast that was the ornate furnishings covered in unkempt piles of toys and trinkets. The desk contained a stunning mound of coins, and behind it, with eyes round in shock, sat the Lord of Luck, his hand paused mid-air with a wishbone held between his fingers.

In the stillness of the following moment, Doyoung realized he was panting, and gulped hard to control it.

Johnny’s brow narrowed, his eyes scanning the reaper before he set down the bone and exhaled slowly. “He’s still there, isn’t he.”

“He got luc—”

The daemon shook his head.

“—alright, you’re right, I broke again and the Ministry is going to siphon my soul through a needle-eye or something as punishment, but can you please see where I’m coming from? Tell me you understand why I can’t do it, why it’s astron _omically_ unjust that this is happening to him! I can’t be the only one who sees this!” Doyoung felt the corners of his eyes begin to burn again, just slightly, and forced a few deep breaths to remain as calm as he could.

In front of him, Johnny’s face unexpectedly softened. His lips, full and usually wide with a grin, turned down sorrowfully at the corners.

“Doyoung, I _do_ understand. That’s why I tried to stop you, way back at the beginning, from letting this go on long enough that it came to this point.” He stood then, his tall, red velvet-suited form facing Doyoung’s darkly-draped one from behind the heavy desk. “Yes, his life is a rare, absurd form of unfair, and it shocked me how much from the moment I first heard of it. Then I met you, and realized—I have a sense for these things—that you were already getting in too deep. Even then, I thought it would be a very hard thing for you to do.”

“It’s too hard! I can’t do it!”

“I know, because you love him,” Johnny said, unblinking.

Doyoung felt a sharp, searing kind of pang string its way through his chest, like electricity through a circuit. “That’s right.”

“So. Now what?”

All that was left was the reason Doyoung came, to ask the only question he could think to ask.

“He told me he was going to win, every time,” Doyoung began, “so can he? Can he win them all? Tell me the odds, Johnny. Tell me what his luck is, if I somehow play fair from now on. Does he stand a chance to stay alive?!”

Johnny’s lips turned down even further. He shook his head. “He...it’s not good, Doyoung. There’s no good luck in being born with an undecided Fate.”

“God... _no._ I knew it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry, Johnny. I want you to do something!” The anger flared again inside Doyoung, pushing him forward a step, and as Johnny’s eyes widened he realized how intimidating he might look in that moment, scythe still present in his hand and cloak billowing around him.

“Me?”

Perhaps Johnny didn’t deserve his anger, but it sure seemed to Doyoung like he ought to be someone who could make a difference. “You’re the fucking Lord of Luck, aren’t you? So look with favor on him, or whatever the hell it is you do!”

“What I _do_ is keep the balance. Some have luck, some don’t. I can’t just change things on a whim, Doyoung. Why should I?”

“Because I am _asking_ you to.”

_Because I have to save him._

Johnny’s lips closed into a strikingly calm expression, his perturbance from a moment earlier fading rapidly away. The daemon of Fortune leveled a clear gaze at the reaper, and held out his hands spread wide.

“I keep the balance, Doyoung. If his luck increases,”—Johnny shifted a hand up—“someone else’s decreases.” His other hand lowered. “Are you willing to be responsible for that?”

The thing was, Doyoung was willing to be responsible for anything that would make a difference in Donghyuck’s Fate. If someone had said, ‘he can keep living, but your entire existence will cease, reaper or otherwise,’ he would have done it. Whatever ‘being responsible’ meant, Doyoung was more than willing, he was eager.

“Like you said, someone has to have it, good luck _or_ bad. I care about _him_ , I can’t care about everyone. Do it.”

Johnny nodded, taking his seat and clasping his hands once again. “Just remember that I warned you. There’s always a balance.”

\---- to be continued ----


	2. I got drinks to drink, a man to hold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s always something to learn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- if anyone is interested, here’s the [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/lebqjbf5n0vr4007p3bwn5vcu/playlist/3eGAToK63LauFo6Yxk0zaI?si=PbdEQK_hR-K1V2NTzgpd9Q) for this baby of mine.  
> \- chapter title from Reaper by Sia again :)  
> \- this universe just keeps growing.

“You...you _did_ something…I-I don’t know what, _yet,_ but things have gone all screwy!” 

Taeyong paced in front of the door, alternating wagging an accusatory finger at Doyoung and spitting out flustered verbal versions of the same, a redness growing around his neck. He hadn’t even allowed Doyoung to get inside the reaper’s office, so frazzled the auditor was by whatever he’d decided was wrong.

Of course, Doyoung knew what he’d done. But that Taeyong didn’t yet, he’d keep relying on until absolutely necessary. 

He also idly wondered what kind of person used the word ‘screwy,’ but decided that it suited Taeyong and his odd duality of razor sharp investigation and stuttering unconfidence. 

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something terribly convincing,” replied Doyoung, keeping a neutral face, “but if I could just enter my office—“ He moved to enter, and paused as Taeyong shifted between him and the door. 

Taeyong opened his mouth and shut it again, his unreasonably sharp jaw going tight. He pointed his finger somewhere in the vicinity of Doyoung’s chin. 

“You shouldn’t ignore rules!” Taeyong finally said, something like a growl, before he straightened his thin tie and swerved jerkily around Doyoung to stalk off down the hall. 

Doyoung couldn’t help the small chuckle from slipping out as he turned the knob and stepped into his office. From inside his cloak, he removed a thin folder and laid it on his desk, turning it open and smoothing his hands over the contents—he’d missed having that giraffe on the wall. 

“Yeah,” he sighed, “but some rules...just suck.”

-

  
  


Doyoung sat across from the inquiry panel once again, with Taeyong shooting him frustrated pouts from the other side of the table as Junmyeon sighed, and sighed again, looking over the new information on Donghyuck’s case. This time, though, Johnny sat beside Doyoung, the Lord uncharacteristically slouched and leaning into his palm, taking little care for his silver suit with its emerald accents poking out. 

“So let me get this straight,” began Junmyeon, “somehow, between when we last met and now, although the Ministry of Fates made no interventions upon the standing destiny of this particular human, he has gone from being statistically ought-to-be-dead to, if I understand this correctly, theoretically incapable of losing any game of chance?”

“That’s correct,” confirmed Taeyong, rather whiningly, his frown giving him all the appearances of a puppy who’d been told he’s not allowed to have a walk today. 

Junmyeon pinched at his nose-bridge, continuing to stare at the mess of papers in front of him. “How?” 

Taeyong aimed a pointed look at Johnny while tapping his pen agitatedly against the table, demanding an answer. 

Johnny appeared not to be listening. With a nudge from Doyoung, he finally looked up, and jerked slightly to realize he’d been addressed.

“I’m sorry?”

“ _How_ has this change occurred, Lord of Fortune?” Junmyeon asked again, an obvious stress vein appearing at his temple. The sight of it made Doyoung want to start screaming silently for help.

Johnny shrugged, settling once again into his chair. “Oh, you know, how does anything like this happen? Cosmic forces at play, do we really know how it all works? So, he’s stumbled into a good bit of luck. Happens from time to time. It’s all very complex—scales and balances, someone somewhere makes a foolish decision”—Doyoung kept very still—”and then, you know, luck can change. So really, who knows?”

A moment of silence fell across the room.

Then—

”That is absolutely the _most_ absurd load of _bullshit!!_ I have nev—”

“Taeyong, please calm down.”

When the auditor had finally simmered, Yuta only just keeping him from flying across the table to potentially, Doyoung feared, strangle Johnny with his bony hands, Junmyeon continued.

“Regardless of how it came to be, I can’t find a reason specifically that dictates further regulation of Lee Donghyuck’s reaping process. Or, put simply,” he stated, “it doesn’t seem like it will make any difference. Nevertheless, based on your repeat history of infractions, I do have to keep you on a certain level of cautionary probation, Doyoung. It won’t be forever, just about...I think three hundred years ought to do it.”

Doyoung winced, then sighed, clasping his hands over the wood of the table. It wasn’t that long, in the grand scheme of things. Just a few centuries they would probably put him through a version of enforced boredom. 

As they left the panel room, Doyoung breathed a sigh of relief so deep he could feel it lighten a pressure in his knees he didn’t know the dead could have. 

Donghyuck was safe, officially. He’d done it. 

“Congratulations, you swerved the worst of it.” A firm pat landed on Doyoung’s shoulder in tandem with the words, Johnny’s hand bedecked with Irish knotted rings and a subtle clover tattoo Doyoung noticed for the first time. 

“Yes, thanks to you.”

Johnny laughed. “Well,” he leaned closer, a conspiratorial whisper, “no one else knows how my job works.” He winked, prompting a roll of Doyoung’s eyes, and leaned back. “So, it’s not like they can question me.” 

“How luc—delightful for you,” Doyoung caught himself. “My job description has clauses. And the clauses have _addendums…_ I,” He paused, a sobering realization at hand. “...I wrote some of them.”

“Well, then no one pities you those three hundred years.”

“I don’t even pity myself. Doesn’t matter, anyway. That’s a cheap price for knowing that Donghyuck can live in peace from now on.”

Johnny quirked an eyebrow at him as they walked, something lingering behind his lips. Finally, he said, “He’s still susceptible to earthly trials, you know. It’s not like you’ve prevented him from ever being bullied, or from all knee scrapes, or anything like that.” 

As the building housing Doyoung’s office came into view, Doyoung waved a dismissive hand. “Life isn’t life without some bumps and bruises, Johnny. He won’t die young, and that’s plenty. Now, I need to go find out from Taeil what I’m going to be doing for the next three centuries, aside from June sixes. Thanks again!” 

The firmament of bleary white disappeared behind Doyoung as he pushed inside the building, Johnny’s parting words stringing through the crack of the doors as they closed,

“Some bruises can hurt quite a lot, Doyoung!”

-

 

The first time Doyoung heard of Mark Lee, Donghyuck was in the middle of successfully, safely turning twenty years old.

“Is this our new park?” Donghyuck asked, while Doyoung gingerly avoided the creaking, rusty swingset and deciding not to take a seat beside the fountain, despite the potential it had for some very interesting algae.

“I guess so...Donghyuck, why is it so...grimy?” 

“Welcome to campus life, hyung. I’ll be here all summer, drowning in music theory and pulling back-to-back’s at the mini-mart.” Casting his backpack haphazardly onto the ground, Donghyuck followed it a second later, apparently careless of the tiny pebbles digging into his bare calves. 

Doyoung was forced to follow suit. Unlike the park in Donghyuck’s hometown, the one just to the back of the college campus was probably twenty square yards and composed of mainly the rusted swings and one very tired wooden play structure. It clearly had not seen much use since the area had been more residential. But it served well enough for their purposes. 

“Oh...that sounds...nice…” he replied, trying unsuccessfully to shake the pebble dust from his palms before extracting the deck of cards from his pocket. There was no beating the fine dusting of grey on his blacks.

Donghyuck continued to talk as Doyoung shuffled. “Don’t worry, hyung, I already have a friend who’s stuck here too. Mark’s super boring and responsible—he’s a math major. You’d like him.” 

“Hm.” That wasn’t so easy to determine. Doyoung liked Jeno, Donghyuck’s proclaimed best friend, and he disliked the girl Mina from Donghyuck’s freshman year who beat Donghyuck out for the top grade in Music History. He just didn’t have much to go on, so he had to make his determinations on what he had. “Well, let’s get this game of cards out of the way and make sure you’ll still need to be looked after.” 

The cacophony of light traffic, a city bus making its rounds, and a stray cat wandering by provided ignorable background music while they moved through the first hand of the game, Doyoung not worrying in the slightest whether his cards were good or not. He’d lose regardless.

But Donghyuck seemed preoccupied, taking his turns slowly and chewing at his lip. Then, from nowhere—

“He’s also...kinda hot. Do you have any fours?” 

Doyoung took a moment to rewind his memory to previous mention of a ‘he,’ and circled around the aforementioned ‘friend.’ There was a different lilt to Donghyuck’s voice, he noticed, but Doyoung carefully maintained his impassive tone.

“I’m sure he is. Go Fish.” 

“Really? Screw you.”

As Donghyuck collected a card and shuffled his hand, Doyoung studied his face. Twenty, and showing signs of adult looks although still soft in its features. The beanie covering his hair made it difficult to see Donghyuck’s eyes clearly through the hair pushed down over them, making him look every bit the exhausted collegiate mongrel he was, but even sitting down he seemed to carry himself differently than he had in years past. And now he was mentioning a boy. 

God, they really grew up too fast. 

“So. He’s kinda hot?” Doyoung ventured tentatively, the territory feeling murky.

Donghyuck dipped his head over the cards, a hint of pink visible at the crest of his cheeks. “Well, I mean, yeah. If you can look past the crutches, and the almost constant complaining about stats homework and how much his cast itches. Then he’s like...hot-ish. Probably leftovers from playing soccer.”

The burst of tiny, fractured puzzle pieces of information fluttered in Doyoung’s mind, where he tried and failed to collect a full picture. In the meantime, Donghyuck laid down a set.

“So, you have a hot ish friend—do you have a three?—who is also stuck here over the summer.”

“No threes, Go Fish. Yeah.”

Doyoung hummed. “Doesn’t sound like the worst summer.”

“I think it’ll be fine,” Donghyuck agreed, along with taking a Jack from Doyoung and laying down another set. “Even if I have to carry his backpack around all the time. Seriously, he should have considered the inconvenience before he went and broke his leg. I mean for me, I’m the one it’s inconveniencing. He’s lucky I’m nice, other sophomores wouldn’t have even looked twice at a transfer student, especially one a class ahead of them. But my shifts are a lot less boring with him hanging around doing summer class homework, so it’s the least I can do.”

“Yes, you’re basically an angel in disguise,” replied Doyoung, then thought of the one seraphim he knew, and frowned. That was actually a little accurate; he could see some frightening similarities between Donghyuck and Jungwoo. 

“What disguise?” Donghyuck smirked. 

“...Any sevens?”

“No, get fishing, reaper. Now, give me your ten so I can go out. All this fish talk is making me hungry, and Jeno’s taking the bus in so we can get dinner soon, and then maybe get drunk, and hopefully I can convince him to text his crush then ‘cause god knows he won’t do it sober. I won’t let him die alone when Renjun is literally right there in his contacts.”

As Doyoung handed over the card, he made sure to put on his best firm voice. “If you’re going to drink, don’t do anything stupid.”

Donghyuck grinned. “Why? I already beat you, what else can I really be afraid of?”

There wasn’t much Doyoung could think to say to that, so he just shook his head. 

The pebbles shifted noisily as Donghyuck stood, plucking his backpack up with a grunt and slinging it over a shoulder. As Doyoung shifted to his knee to prepare to stand, Donghyuck stuck out a hand as if to help him up, then thought better of it and pulled it back, laughing a little awkwardly and adjusting his hat instead. 

“Don’t worry about me, hyung,” he said, “the rest of my life isn’t interesting enough for you to lose sleep over. Wait, do you sleep?”

The reaper assured him that he didn’t, and so it wasn’t a concern of his anyway, and Donghyuck assured him that was more tragic than the fact that he was already dead. Then he was gone, jogging away from the park and taking his aura of fortune and gold with him. 

Doyoung pocketed the playing cards and tried fruitlessly to dust off his pants again. 

“Everything is interesting about you, Lee Donghyuck,” he sighed, and faded out of the park. 

-

 

The queue moved forward rather slowly, the souls waiting in it chatting casually with one another and apparently unconcerned about waiting for their turn. What the turn was for, Doyoung couldn’t quite tell. He’d never gone to see Johnny before and been met with a line of souls stretching out the door and out of the building and down the hill; confusion replaced his annoyance fairly quickly. 

He studied the souls. It wasn’t like the crowd that hung around the courthouse, typically comprised of murder victims and such all waiting to file official complaints, hoping for approval to take on ghost status and begin a haunting, or send a vengeance directive to a living person. Doyoung kept away from that crowd. 

This crowd projected an aura of almost delight, and they each seemed to be carrying something. A gym sock. A horseshoe, rusted and chipping. Some six-sided dice in one souls hand, clinking as he jostled them against his palm. One girl had her arms hooked through a faded sport jersey, obviously washed within an inch of its life. 

Doyoung circled the line a few times in interest, then gave up on waiting with the intention of returning later, after things had died down. By that time, only a few souls remained in the queue, and the reaper was able to make his way into Johnny’s office as a small boy dropped something into the Lord’s hand and left, Johnny waving after him with a bright smile. 

“What did that child give you?” 

Johnny turned his attention to Doyoung and held up the small item, fluffy and grey and soft looking. “Oh, this? His sister left a talisman on his grave. He was bringing it to me, to give the luck back to his family. Rabbit’s foot...a classic. Personally I prefer heads-up pennies, but some of these lore are stronger than others.” He turned the charm in his palm, the fine fur rolling soundlessly as he petted it with one finger, before carrying it over to basket along the wall. Johnny dropped the talisman there, the grey fur landing atop a pile of countless others just like it, becoming indistinguishable. He returned to behind the desk, sliding into the mahogany chair with grace and calmly lacing his fingers over his lap. 

Doyoung started, then glanced around the office. The piles of seemingly random objects now thrown into startling clarity, he gasped at the stacks of horseshoes, the overflowing piles of coins, the veritable bouquet of clover that he originally thought was a questionably tasteless handful of weeds. 

“You mean to say, you can give a person luck from one of these?” he asked, incredulous. 

“Some, yes.” 

“So I could have just brought you...like, forty rabbits’ feet for Donghyuck?” 

Johnny shook his head, definitive. “No.” 

“Why not?” 

Sighing, Johnny passed a hand over the coins spilled across his desk, every possible currency represented. He tapped at a penny, the copper shining brightly, then replied, “Can you carry a talisman, Doyoung?” 

“I don’t see why no—“ Doyoung sniffed, reaching for the clover, and then gasped quietly in shock as his fingers passed through them like they were ghosts. “...apparently I cannot.” 

“Only the living can send them, only the souls to whom they were sent can carry them, and only I can receive them. So no. And besides, you could never have brought enough.” 

Doyoung wiggled his fingers amid the ghostlike clover, then huffed and drew them back, crossing his arms and tapping his chin in thought. “Perhaps if Donghyuck himself brought them, say to a relative’s grave, and then _that_ person—“

Johnny groaned. “It doesn’t _matter_ , reaper, he would never know how much he needed them, and anyway he doesn’t anymore. Besides, many cultures have forgotten this practice of late; the folklore doesn’t carry it like it used to.”

“What a pity.”

“Indeed. But nevermind that, what brings you to my cluttered corner of the afterlife?”

After watching the host of souls bring their talismans, Doyoung felt it a little silly and inconsequential to have come all the way there just to brag that Donghyuck had potentially developed a crush, and was clearly thereby flourishing in his continuing lifespan. 

“Oh it’s nothing, nevermind.” He shuffled behind the chair opposite Johnny’s, taking care not to disturb what he assumed was a pile of lucky socks. 

Johnny smiled, smug. “It’s about Donghyuck, then.”

“Not _everything_ is always about him.”

“Doyoung, he’s the only thing you ever talk to me about.”

“Well what else would I talk about? I reap exclusively souls over seventy-five years of age now, I have nothing except him to discuss,” huffed Doyoung. 

The grin on Johnny's face widened. “We just had a whole other conversation.”

“When?”

“Just now.”

Doyoung blinked. “Well that was about work. That doesn’t count.”

“Doyoung, Donghyuck is also work.”

“He is not, he’s my—“ Doyoung paused his indignant response, a crease appearing between his brows. 

_Just what is he?_

“Yes? He’s...?”

Doyoung decided the grin Johnny wore had become far too infuriating and therefore didn’t deserve a detailed answer, and so he rolled his eyes and prodded a finger against the back of the chair.

“Different. That stopped being work a long time ago.”

“I figured you’d say something like that.”

“Well if you already know everything about it, then I’ll just show myself out, won’t I? Why I bothered coming…”

Johnny stood, laughing and calling for Doyoung to wait as the reaper angled towards the door. “Doyoung, I’m just teasing you, come on. I want to hear it. What’s the kid up to now?”

Maybe he was over-eager to share on the subject. Maybe he just liked gossip anyway. But Doyoung was back in the room and sitting down on the edge of the chair only a moment later. 

“Listen,” he started, crossing his black-slacked legs and leaning forward. “I think he’s got a crush. He was very cool about it, but he wouldn’t have mentioned something if it wasn’t important right? I mean, if it was nothing, why bother telling me? That’s right, isn’t it?”

Having eased back into his chair, Johnny nodded as he listened, a bemused glimmer in his eyes. “Sounds like pretty typical young adult behavior to me.” 

“Oh god, can we please not call him an adult yet? I know he is one, but it stresses me out. He’s already finished his second year in university, that’s bad enough.” 

“I thought you wanted him to go? Wasn’t this all what you hoped for?”

Doyoung hmphed. “Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean I can’t complain about it anyway.”

“Must be hard, being an empty-nester.”

“Alright, I’m going.”

“Glad to hear he’s doing well! Keep me updated!...I know you can still hear me, Doyoung!” 

—

 

The set up was, Doyoung had to admit, pretty haphazard, a bit slapdash on his part. He still wasn’t clear on where Jaemin had produced the old box television set from, nor the gaming console, and he was even less sure how the series of cords and wires connecting the two allowed the game to work, disregarding the fact that all of that was plugged into nothing at all. It looked like a mess to him, but the point was: it _did_ work. 

Donghyuck had laughed and called it ‘ratchet,’ which was a word Doyoung didn’t recognize but assumed based on Donghyuck’s warm smile was complimentary. 

Even if Doyoung wasn’t already more than sure that Donghyuck would beat him on principle, the fact that he had absolutely no experience with playing video games of any kind removed any worry he might have had anyway. What _didn’t_ cancel out his worry, was the distracted way in which Donghyuck played, spacing out every few minutes or even pulling out his phone mid-race.

“Will you focus? I didn’t figure out how to bring video games from the afterlife for you to die over a game of Mario Kart,” Doyoung chided, watching his own character careen off sideways and slam into a brightly colored mountain. He wasn’t surprised. Why would a toadstool know how to drive?

Donghyuck apologized quickly, his eyes darting back to the screen. 

“Sorry I’m _nervous_ ok?—ah fuck, almost hit a blue shell—he’s gonna be there tonight and it’s distracting.” 

“He? He who? Donghyuck, who is the ‘ _he’_ that’s important enough to make you—oh shit, heck...dammit.”

As Doyoung’s car flung itself—naturally _he_ didn’t do it, he couldn’t fathom why the character didn’t follow his driving instructions—wildly off a bridge, Donghyuck’s car with its orange-clothed princess character slid easily past and took the lead. A second later, however, Donghyuck’s phone chimed and he dropped his controller immediately in favor of picking it up, hunched over the device and smiling goofily as his fingers tapped away.

Doyoung tried to move his—miraculously restored—character slowly, but the game just kept going even as Donghyuck’s car idled.

“Donghyuck.”

“One second, I just...need to…”

Impossibly, as the second stretched into a minute, Doyoung found his toadstool primed for the finish line, and the reaper’s jaw dropped in shock as the screen announced _he_ had won the second round of their tournament. 

He panicked. He wasn’t supposed to be able to win _anything._

“Donghyuck,” Doyoung urged, voice shaking, “you must concentrate on this ridiculous game. I just won a race I don’t know how to run. Can the messages wait?”

The boy finally looked up, and his eyes went wide in shock. “Oh my god. You did. What in the actual fuck.”

“Well, just win the next race, alright? You’re lucky it’s a tournament sort of game.” 

A tiny victory celebration played on the screen, and Donghyuck laughed in a nervous way, the sound stilted. His phone lay ignored for the next race, all concentration applied and focused to win the competition taking place on a treacherous road constructed, seemingly, from rainbows. Thankfully, Donghyuck only really needed to apply a fraction of his attention to the game to win it, much more skilled as he was at swerving around the track and picking up the strange little boxes to hurl their contents mercilessly at Doyoung’s poor fungus-creature. With a skillful toss of one such item, Donghyuck veritably obliterated Doyoung’s car, and sped through the finish line to the reception of an animated fanfare where his princess was quickly crowned champion.

They both breathed a sigh of relief.

“Nice aim. You win as usual,” Doyoung congratulated, his momentary panic subsiding.

Donghyuck jumped up from his spot on the grass immediately. “Sick, ok, are we good? I’m golden till twenty-two? I really gotta go hyung, I have like three hours to transform my tired music major ass into an irresistibly sexy morsel so time is kinda of the essence.” 

The reaper made a face, tossing his controller in front of the tv. “Your ass is going nowhere until you tell me exactly who it is you’re trying to look like that for, and also, damn you for making me hear, with my own two ears, you describe yourself in those words.” 

“What…sexy morsel?” 

“Stop that.” 

“I’m gonna be _scrumptious,_  hyung.” 

“Alright, give me your hand, obviously the afterlife is the only place I can trust you to behave yourself—” 

“Hell no, I absolutely will not be dying before I get Mark Lee to kiss me. You can take that on oath.”

Drawing back the hand he’d teasingly stretched out, Doyoung felt an odd shock like excitement. “Did you say Mark?” he asked. “Is this ‘kinda hot-ish’ Mark from last year? He’s coming here,” Doyoung gestured to Donghyuck’s neighborhood park, the very same one from all his childhood years, “and you want him to kiss you? Oh, Donghyuck.” 

Humanity on full display, Donghyuck’s face flushed a deep scarlet in the late afternoon sunshine. He scratched at the back of his neck, embarrassed, and nodded.

“Yeah, that one. Turns out he can be very hot, once he’s not crutching around so much. Only really noticed after having to spend an entire class sharing notes with him.”

Doyoung fought the urge to coo in happiness. “You had a class together? But, didn’t you say he was studying mathematics?” His questions spilled out, digging eagerly into the story the more it made Donghyuck looks sheepish.

Donghyuck sighed. “He is, it was just an elective he ended up in ‘cause of being late for class signups. The idiot’s computer crashed, like, halfway through making his selections. College is really a bitch for some people, you know? And then he just...kinda started hanging out with me and Jeno sometimes...I don’t know.” Donghyuck kicked at the grass, sighing again. “He’s stupid but sometimes he says stuff and it’s all insightful and like, genuine, and sometimes he’s really sweet and I just kinda lose it. So I just want him to kiss me, ‘cause then I think I’ll know for sure.” 

“Does he like you?”

“I don’t know.” Donghyuck hung his head, whispering the words. “Renjun says he does, but I don’t know myself.”

“Well, in that case, I suppose I had better let you be on your way. I believe you have a party that you need to get looking good for?”

Grinning, Donghyuck nodded eagerly, their two smiles matching for a moment before Donghyuck’s twisted into a cocky smirk.

“Morsel.”

“That’s it, I hope you’ve enjoyed living until now—”

—

 

Doyoung didn’t go to the Lip often. There wasn’t much there that actually interested him. But if he had to admit, he might say it was mainly the approach that he liked, if anything about it. The sudden opening up of sky and the ground falling away in sheer cliff face, that dramatic moment of realizing you can go no further. Beyond that piece, there wasn’t much. 

So he wasn’t entirely sure what prompted him to trek all the way out to it, winding up the subtle but steady incline until the drop off came into view. 

He found Kun there with a sketchbook. 

Which is to say, he found a bit of a surprise, considering Doyoung didn’t realize Kun ever left the dream workshop. The sheer number of orders they put out at any given moment, and the veritable fleet of staff the supervisor had to manage, seemed more than enough to keep him busy for eternity and then some. 

“You don’t have to just stand there awkwardly, Doyoung,” Kun called to him, informing the reaper that, yes, he was aware of Doyoung shuffling around the grass trying to decide whether or not to leave. He wasn’t too sure how Kun knew it was him there; but then, Kun did manage a host of largely young-ish souls, so perhaps it wasn’t unreasonable to assume he had actual eyes somewhere in the back of his head of gently tousled tawny hair, to prevent the inevitable goofing off.

Doyoung took a gingerly seat slightly behind and to the left of Kun, a good bit further from the cliff edge than the Head Dreammaker. How Kun could so casually sit with his legs dangling over the literal edge of their plane of existence, he couldn’t guess. Below where his feet hung was actual nothing, as far as he knew. The space between dimensions, perhaps limbo, perhaps nonexistence itself—the uncertainty of it made Doyoung’s arm hair stand on end. 

Kun set down his sketchbook, the page covered in strange shapes and disparate objects, and leaned back on his palms, regarding Doyoung with a calm smile that complemented his even composure. 

“What brings you out here?”

“To the Lip? I’m not sure. It’s been a while.”

“I wish everyone would stop calling it that,” Kun sighed, the tiniest of frowns denting his face. “It’s the Edge of All Existence. That ought to demand a little respect. It’s undignified to call it _the Lip.”_

A shrug lifted Doyoung’s shoulders. “That’s a bit of a mouthful. Lip is easier.” 

“Imagine how disappointed folklorists would be to hear you say that.”

“What about you?” asked Doyoung, not terribly interested in whether lore was being accurately imagined. “What are you sitting here for? You aren’t busy?”

Kun kicked his foot, the space around it rippling slightly as though he kicked at some invisible substance.

“I’m always busy. But making dreams is no picnic, you know?”

“I can only imagine. Jaeminnie has mentioned it a few times, how…” _frustrating, annoying, boring,_ “challenging it can be.”

A knowing laugh. “Jaemin...he took some training. But he’s one of my best now. He was a natural at it, once he got the hang of the basics. It’s just the scrambler that frustrates him, which is understandable. It’s never fun to take a nicely written dream and have to make it nonsense. But we can’t just send the living perfectly composed dreams all the time, it causes far too much suspicion.”

He hadn’t got much experience with dreams himself that he could recall, but Doyoung nodded amenably. It sounded reasonable. 

The faintest breeze fluttered past Doyoung, ruffling his collar and the loose ends of Kun’s shirt before throwing itself carelessly over the edge of the cliff, becoming another imperceptible part of the immense open space. Doyoung scooted a very tiny bit closer, just enough to glance over the edge himself. 

It was like trying to watch a play without the curtains being completely drawn open. That last thin sheet of hazy gauze, still separating the movement and color from vision, making it impossible to distinguish specific figures or distinct scenes. Somewhere in the general direction of below and far away was the Land of the Living—or if you were Jaemin, the LOL, an acronym which to Doyoung’s knowledge had yet to amuse anyone else as much as Jaemin himself—its shores just faintly visible from their high perch, and the goings-on hidden behind that curtain. 

Looking through the veil was ultimately fruitless, Doyoung had long ago decided. He had witnessed souls wandering out to the edge to peer as hard as they could, hoping for a glimpse of something they recognized, someone they missed, only to be disappointed; but Doyoung remembered nothing of his life, of who he was or what he did, so it never tempted him. 

“It inspires me,” said Kun, as if reading his mind. 

“To make better dreams?”

He nodded, “I feel like I owe it to them, the Living. Dreams can be really precious. If I watch for a while, I have an easier time connecting the dream with the person. They don’t feel as far away.”

“It’s too bad it’s all so hard to see,” Doyoung mused, gazing at the blurry dots so very far away. Somewhere amongst them was Donghyuck, going about his life, hopefully getting kissed. Doyoung thought it must be nearing Christmas time, and wondered if things had progressed enough for him to be sharing that with Mark. 

Strange, to think of Donghyuck in any season other than Summer. He simply couldn’t picture it. 

Doyoung felt eyes on him, and turned to meet Kun’s even gaze. 

“I can see them.”

Jaw slack, Doyoung blinked at him. “You...how?”

“I’m not sure entirely myself, but I think it’s part of who I am here. How do you put a dream in the mind of someone you can’t see? I don’t think it would work. Of course, it’s only when they’re asleep that they’re visible for me.” He glanced down at his sketchbook, and Doyoung wondered if, to Kun, the strange shapes formed something that the reaper couldn’t distinguish, the same way his vision saw through what Doyoung’s couldn’t pierce.

Kun lifted his hand, fingers stretching into the thin air. 

“When the sands of sleep blur their vision, mine clears, and I can see every story. Maybe because I was a bard in my life, but it’s as though my whole existence is tied to composing stories for humankind, first those waking and listening, and now those lost to consciousness and bartering only in dreams.“

He’d never heard Kun talk like this; he didn’t know this bit of history...being honest, if Doyoung thought about it and the collection of beings on his plane of existence...well. He could stand to know more, probably. Maybe. 

Kun let out a wistful sigh. “It’s hard work to make dreams, they’re very delicate things. Lots of blurred edges and seemingly unimportant, yet critical details. But you know,” his chin dipped low, eyes resting on the horizon of the living world with a gaze almost loving, yet hemmed with aching pity, “I think it’s ever so much harder to be alive. If I can make something to ease that, mustn’t I?”

Doyoung could feel it. Not for himself, not through memories of his life—the hardness of that no more recollectible to him than a word already spoken—but through the memories of other lives. Through a tiny girl, murdered in cold blood. Through an old woman, aged hands deft through their soreness and able still to weave. Through a youth, more the definition of selflessness and joy than any parable or religious verse, taken from his family too soon by little more than an accidental slip. 

Through a young man, cursed by fate, but valiant as the sun in spite of it, in defiance of it. 

Perhaps Doyoung mostly saw just the end of it, yet he knew. Life, being alive...was very hard. 

“It probably means very little to come from me,” Doyoung said, keeping his eyes trained on his fingers combing through the long grass, “but I believe you do your work honorably, Kun.”

“It means plenty, if you knew how infrequently I’m told something like that.”

Doyoung didn’t. But he wondered, then, which of the souls in his past reapings had been on the receiving end of any of Kun’s hand-crafted dreams. Did they know? Had anyone ever thanked him? He wondered, but felt it might be insensitive to ask. Instead, he asked, “May I be so bold as to make a request of you?”

Kun turned a curious eye to him. “What kind?”

“The kind that would make a life easier, I hope. Or at least the end of it.”

“I’d be happy to take one of that sort,” Kun replied, his eyes twinkling and soft dimples denting his cheeks. 

“Then, please compose a dream for me. The warmest, kindest, most gentle dream you can. Something so welcoming and...and loving, that a dying soul can’t feel the pain of losing their life, of leaving anything behind. I want it to be a dream so beautiful that it fades the passage between lives into a moment of calmness and bliss.”

“My, that’s a tall order. Who is it that needs such a dear dream?”

Doyoung thought of Donghyuck, of the eventual day he’d have to die, and almost wanted to say he’d need it himself to complete the reaping. But of course, it was only ever Donghyuck he’d go to such lengths for, and it was only Donghyuck he wanted to protect from such pain. But better that he didn’t make his favoritism too blatant, just in case Kun ever chatted with other departments. He’d rather not have to visit with Taeyong about this. 

“No one right now. You have a number of years to work on it, I think,” Doyoung clarified. “It‘s an advance order, for when the time comes.”

“Hmm, I see.” Kun nodded, knowing, and held out his hand, a gentle golden glow at his fingertips. “I can make that without knowing a name. If you give me your hand now, and think of the soul, I’ll put the order in myself.”

Against Doyoung’s cool, pale fingertips Kun’s radiated warmth, a moment of shimmer passing between them in the brief touch. 

“There. Whoever that soul is, when they die, I’ll have this ready.”

The promise gave Doyoung a strange sense of peace, one he hadn’t known he’d been looking for. He would have to reap Donghyuck’s soul one day, yes, but at least he now knew his passing would be pleasant. 

Standing, Doyoung took a last glance out at the distant, obscured shores of life, and felt calm. 

He spoke, hoping his voice conveyed his deep gratitude as he said, “Thank you, Sandman.” 

Kun laughed. “Another nickname I don’t love. But, you’re welcome, I will do my very best.”

“I believe that. It will mean more than you can know.”

And it would, oh how it would. 

—

 

What exactly dictated the spot where Doyoung would meet Donghyuck each year, the reaper didn’t truly know. Perhaps the most convenient location for the boy, or the place least difficult to have privacy—he didn’t have the answer. If it was the universe making this call, it sure seemed to prefer parks or other outdoor spaces, like the beach onto which Doyoung walked with mild distaste, his shoes losing traction as they pressed into the sand and the soles grew uncomfortably hot. 

Donghyuck faced the water as Doyoung approached. The ocean, the reaper guessed, going by the size of the cheerful waves hurtling full tilt towards the break, crashing over themselves into the shores a stones throw past the human. And Donghyuck looked like he belonged standing there, ruling the tide with his serene gaze, his linen shirt and swim shorts dancing around his body in the playful wind. He looked right, with the sun anointing the crown of his hair in a shimmer, blessing his honeyed skin with gentle, invisible fingers, more like it existed to stand foil to him than to light the galaxy that spun around it. 

“Happy birthday, golden child,” Doyoung said by way of greeting. 

Turning his chin just slightly, Donghyuck let an easy smile pulls his lips. “I’ve graduated from Hyuckie?”

“You’ve graduated from a few things, I believe.”

Stretching his arms out wide, Donghyuck tilted his chin to the sky and blew out a breath that turned quickly into a laugh. “Hell yeah,” he said, “god, it feels so good to be done with school. I mean, I still have to find a way to _use_ a bachelor of fine arts degree in music composition, but at least I have it.” 

Doyoung didn’t have a single doubt he would. “I believe in you,” he said, feeling a fierce pride.

“I know you do...okay, what? What is your face doing?”

“Nothing?”

“No,” Donghyuck squinted at him in the sunlight, wrinkling his nose. “You’ve got that look. The one you always wear when you’re dying to ask me something. So what is it?”

Admittedly, Doyoung did want to ask Donghyuck many things, and as infrequently as they met he must have worn the expression often. Shifting the items he held carefully behind his back, Doyoung chuckled awkwardly. “Well, yes...it’s just, I’m curious. A year ago, you were after a certain kiss, I believe—”

Berry-red tinted Donghyuck’s cheeks, a hand drawing up to cover his mouth.

“So?”

Donghyuck nodded, face reddening even more.

For some reason, Donghyuck’s success in romance felt like a personal victory to Doyoung. “Haha!” he exclaimed, smile open-mouthed, and very nearly clasped Donghyuck’s shoulder before catching himself. “So! A kiss!”

Donghyuck’s hand shifted till just two fingers dwelled on his lips, the corners of which turned up delightedly. He tilted his head, eyes mischievous and suggestive. Doyoung’s eyes widened.

“More than a kiss?! D-Donghyuck—”

“Well just! Not like...I mean,” the boy stuttered, looking down to his bare feet in the sand, kicking a lump of it and watching it slide between his toes, “we’re um, dating now. Have been since almost right after last year! It’s kind of weird, realizing you wouldn’t have known.”

Doyoung felt the comment like a bee sting; a little painful, but with the understanding that the bee intended no ill will. It just was what it was, and he was grateful to be privy to any of it in the first place. 

“Donghyuckie, I’m so, so happy for you,” he said, washing the sting away with his own force of well-wishes. 

“He’s here, actually.”

“What?”

Donghyuck turned to look over his shoulder, peering at the high sandbank that rose up at the curve of the beach to their right, its swell melting into the flatter shore before the water could reach it, but the brunt of it hiding the rest of the beach that must be beyond. 

“Just over there, somewhere, Like around that sand dune, holed up under the umbrella ‘cause he misplaced the sunscreen and he’ll just sunburn like you wouldn’t believe. Lucky I even thought to bring the umbrella!”

“You’re on a trip together, then?” asked Doyoung, softly, resisting the desire to race around to the other side of the beach and find Mark, meet the person responsible for the happy blush on Donghyuck’s cheeks. He knew it wouldn’t work anyway—he couldn’t just go meeting living people who weren’t being reaped, especially in the middle of a different potential-reaping.

“Yeah, it was his graduation and birthday gift to me. Kind of a copout, but our AirBnB is cute as hell so I’ve forgiven him for it. It has a hammock swing!” 

“I don’t...really know what any of that means.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m guessing the contest is kites? Or were you just carrying them as accessories?”

The small sky-crafts Doyoung produced from behind his back were colorful things, their material sleek and brightly patterned with long fluttering tails. He’d expected something much more humble when he’d asked Jaemin to help him find kites, something trapezoidal with two crossed poles and a bow on the tail, but naturally Jaemin always brought him a version that wasn’t from the history books. 

Anyway, Doyoung still knew how to fly a kite. 

“Yes, we are going to see who can keep their kite flying the longest.”

“The weather is perfect for that! I bet you had no idea if it would be. Fortuitous, huh?” 

“Oh, he doesn’t have to have a hand in _everything,_ honestly,” said Doyoung, rolling his eyes as he handed the red kite to Donghyuck and began to unwind the string on his blue one. 

“Who?”

“Never mind. Should we launch them on three? Move over a few steps, we need space.”

As if on command, the breeze shifted subtly just as they both set their kites into flight, its formless hands lifting them to a soaring height the moment they were released. Doyoung had to appreciate that, for once, Donghyuck’s luck catered to him a little too, allowing them both to enjoy the unique delight of guiding a kite around a cloudless sky for a while. 

From a few yards away, Donghyuck giggled and grinned toothily up at the sky. “Feels just like summer camp again,” he called over, “Jeno and I used to try this every year. Never worked this well though.”

Not an ounce of surprise did Doyoung feel when the wind shifted again a short while later; they both adjusted, but only Donghyuck’s kite stayed airborne while Doyoung’s swooped wildly before diving into the sand. 

“That was nice while it lasted,” he sighed, brushing the fabric off as Donghyuck reeled his kite in and jogged over. 

Even at twenty-two, the human wasn’t above a victory dance, apparently. “Lee Donghyuck, kite master!” he cheered, dancing around the sand and striking a pose. He pointed at Doyoung. “Say I’m the kite master, hyung!”

“You’re the kite master.”

“I am _the_ kite master!”

“Alright, well, will the kite master allow me, the kite loser, to bid him farewell? Some of us don’t have the luxury of lounging on the beach with our hot-ish boyfriends all day.”

Donghyuck stopped his dancing, the red returning to his cheeks as his smile turned soft. “Mark.”

“That would be the one, I hear. I’ll expect an update when we meet again, kite master.” Doyoung gathered both kites and turned to leave, feeling more than knowing that their time for the day was up. He gave the boy one last glance. “Have a wonderful time, Donghyuck. Enjoy the...what was it?...the hammock?”

“Will do my best, hyung,” Donghyuck said, saluting. “He doesn’t know it yet, but I’ve already planned for me and Mark to cuddle in it later and watch the sunset. Maybe with drinks. We’ll see.”

“Sounds lovely. See you later, Donghyuck.”

Donghyuck winked and dashed for the bank. 

Doyoung watched him jog away, a brilliant figure against the glittering ocean, alive and, perhaps, in love. It looked right.

—

 

While not a sunset in the true sense, the sky view one could see if taking a leisurely walk along the distant bend of the river in the afterworld was really quite pleasant, and a good activity for one to catch up with a friend. 

Doyoung hadn’t seen Jungwoo in ages. Actually just one age, for those counting, but in Jungwoo’s habitually hyperbolic estimation it had been ‘ages and ages’ and so long he’d ‘forgotten the look of my dear friend Doyoung’s face.’

“I thought angels didn’t forget things,” said Doyoung as they strolled along, the smooth stone path providing a guided route. 

“I’m a seraphim and we can forget anything we want to. You wouldn’t believe all the things I’ve forgotten. You’d go slack-jawed at the list.”

Doyoung decided not to point out that if Jungwoo could make a list of all the things he’d forgotten, he had not actually forgotten them in the first place. 

“I’m sure I would,” he replied instead. “How have you been?”

“I’ve been well! Not that busy, being perfectly honest.”

“Oh? Being an angel doesn’t require much, then?” 

Jungwoo adjusted his long, very white tunic over his shoulder, the gold trim glimmering as it shifted in the light. He pouted at Doyoung in a disappointed sort of way. “ _Seraphim._ Much more required of us than the silly little angels that just go floating around spreading light or whatever. But I mean me specifically, as pretty much a glorified receptionist. It’s a lot of scroll-pushing and waiting, only to let souls know the fates didn’t approve their request for an audience.”

The river flowed along gently, moving in the unhurried way that it always did regardless of anything else in existence, with its tiny offshoot rivulets burbling out at random points and sparkling off in their own directions. They crossed one of these, pausing on the small bridge that leaned over it to admire the water. 

“What is it that you do, exactly?” Doyoung asked, feeling like somewhere in their friendship he’d missed an important point. 

Jungwoo brightened, his eyes sparkling like the water with enthusiasm as though he hadn’t been complaining only moments earlier. “Oh!,” he said, “I’m secretary to the Fates. I mean I don’t get anything for them, I’ve never even seen them, but any soul who wants to petition them brings that to me. It’s really quite an important role.” He stood a bit taller as he spoke, accentuating the few inches of height he had on Doyoung by pulling his shoulders back as they continued their walk. The delicate, silky wings that he kept folded neatly between his shoulder blades rustled elegantly as if with pride.

“I had no idea that was you,” muttered Doyoung, wondering what he actually _did_ know about what went on around him. “I’ve never bothered to request an audience before.”

“It really isn’t worth it, in my humble opinion. They hardly ever take them. And it takes so _long,_ if you only have a little time, say twenty years, then you might as well not bother. They take ages to respond. Most souls have forgotten why they even asked by the time I have a response for them.” 

And there it was, the reason why he hadn’t attempted it. If Doyoung had thought marching up to the Ministry of Fates would have done a jot of good for Donghyuck, he’d have knocked the door down. But as it was, he wasn’t even sure where the door _was,_ and knew for a fact he didn’t have the time to wait on an approval. Donghyuck could have been dead by the time they let him have an audience; better to act first and ask forgiveness later. That had just barely worked.

“How pointless. But then, if you’re not busy, why don’t I ever see you?”

Jungwoo slung a lanky arm over Doyoung’s shoulder. “I think you mean why don’t _I_ ever see _you._ I hear you’ve been monopolized by just one case for more than twenty years now. I hear you’ve been in trouble, even!”

Mischief sparkled in his eyes. Doyoung imagined that his existence must seem exciting, if Jungwoo mainly stamped scrolls and found polite ways to say, ‘sorry, your request has been denied,’ with most of his afterlife. 

“It’s not as interesting as all that,” Doyoung assured.

“So it’s true then!” Jungwoo slipped his arm around and down to link with Doyoung’s, his pristine white intertwining with the black of Doyoung’s cloak. “Tell me everything, right from the beginning. Don’t you dare leave anything out, either! I have to know what had Taeyong in fits for half a decade.” He wiggled his arm, tugging at Doyoung’s elbow and whining. “Come on, spill!” 

Over the trees that ran along the opposite side of the river, the gentle glow of the sky tinted a nice tangerine, and Doyoung thought of the earth sunsets that he sometimes saw during reapings. He thought of Donghyuck, clinging to the arm of a boy named Mark whose face he didn’t know, watching a sunset of their own over the glimmering ocean. 

Doyoung smiled fondly. “Well, it started with this baby, you see.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> donghyuck getting older and saucier...meanwhile doyoung doesn’t know shit about anything :)
> 
> im excited to bring even more of this world to u all. :)) i hope u enjoyed this update, id love to hear thoughts as always. more to come!! <33

**Author's Note:**

> u guys have no idea how excited i have been to share this w u all. since i wrote IALAY, this has not left my mind n i also can’t wait to bring u the next piece—where we will get more of donghyuck again finally! 
> 
> it would give me the greatest joy to hear comments on what u think, theories, if u like the universe here etc. what r u hoping for w the final upcoming piece? please tell me in the comments here or bring more questions to my cc!!
> 
>  
> 
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/ImJaeBabie)   
> || [twt](https://twitter.com/imjaebabie?lang=en)   
> 


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